Out-of-Field Teaching and the Limits of Teacher Policy

Richard M. Ingersoll

81 citations0/0 files storedScholarlyCommons (University of Pennsylvania)

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School Choice and Performance Teacher Professional Development and Motivation Teacher Education and Assessments

Abstract

The failure to ensure that the nation's classrooms are all staffed with qualified teachers is one of the most important problems in contemporary American education. Over the past decade, many panels, commissions, and studies have focused attention on this problem and, in turn, numerous reforms have been initiated to upgrade the quality and quantity of the teaching force. This report focuses on the problem of underqualified teachers in the core academic fields at the 7-12th grade level. Using data from the nationally representative Schools and Staffing Survey, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, this analysis examined how many classes are not staffed by minimally qualified teachers, and to what extent these levels have changed in recent years. The data show that while almost all teachers hold at least basic qualifications, there are high levels of out-of-field teaching - teachers assigned to teach subjects that do not match their training or education. Moreover, the data show that out-of-field teaching has gotten slightly worse in recent years, despite a plethora of reforms targeted to improving teacher quality. The report discusses possible reasons for the failure of these reform efforts. My thesis is that, despite the unprecedented interest in and awareness of this problem, there remains little understanding of a key issue - the reasons for the prevalence of underqualified teaching in American schools - resulting thus far in a failure of teacher policy and reform. I conclude by drawing out the lessons and implications of these failures for the prospects of the No Child Left Behind Act to successfully address the problem of underqualified teachers in classrooms in the coming years.

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References

1986Those Who Understand: Knowledge Growth in Teaching 1983A nation at risk 1992How College Affects Students: Findings and Insights From Twenty Years of Research.2001Teacher Turnover and Teacher Shortages: An Organizational Analysis 2000Teacher Quality and Student Achievement: A Review of State Policy Evidence 1996The Effect of School Resources on Student Achievement 1991Multiplying Inequalities: The Effects of Race, Social Class, and Tracking on Opportunities to Learn Mathematics and Science.1999The Problem of Underqualified Teachers in American Secondary Schools

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2014Understanding the lived experiences of novice out-of-field teachers in relation to school leadership practices 2016Quantitative and qualitative teacher shortage and the turnover phenomenon 2020Teacher qualification matters: The association between cumulative teacher qualification and students’ educational attainment 2009Teaching Out-of-Field in Western Australia

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